Rethinking the human and nature relationship through sensory art

Currently on view at Museum MACAN in Jakarta, Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey is an immersive Olafur Eliasson exhibition that unfolds as a poetic exploration of perception, ecology, and the human and nature relationship. Bringing together works from across three decades of practice, the exhibition invites visitors to engage with art not as passive observers, but as active participants whose presence completes each work.

Sensory art as experience

At the heart of the exhibition lies Eliasson’s commitment to sensory art. Light, fog, air, water, and movement function not as materials to be controlled, but as collaborators that shape the experience in real time. The exhibition design encourages slow navigation through shifting environments, where visibility, scale, and orientation continuously change. Even when perception feels unstable, viewers are asked to trust their senses, whether they are walking into dense monochromatic fog or encountering fragmented reflections that alter one’s sense of space.

This emphasis on bodily engagement reflects Eliasson’s belief that artworks are never fixed objects, but evolving situations shaped by context, environment, and audience.

Human and nature relationship in art

Throughout the exhibition, Eliasson foregrounds the human and nature relationship, challenging the idea that nature exists merely as a backdrop to human activity. Instead, natural forces appear as autonomous agents with their own rhythms, histories, and capacities for transformation. By presenting natural phenomena as active participants, the exhibition subtly questions anthropocentric worldviews and proposes a more reciprocal way of inhabiting the planet.

This ecological perspective resonates strongly in Jakarta, where urban life, climate realities, and natural systems intersect daily, adding further layers of meaning to the exhibition’s themes.

Key artworks

Several works exemplify Eliasson’s exploration of the human and nature relationship in art:

One highlight, Wind writings, records invisible atmospheric forces through a mechanical system driven by wind. Brushes attached to a rotating mechanism trace continuous marks on paper, allowing weather conditions themselves to leave a visual testimony. In dialogue with this, Sun drawing uses glass spheres to concentrate sunlight onto paper, burning delicate traces that document the passage of time and environmental change.

In The last seven days of glacial ice, Eliasson presents bronze casts of melting ice fragments alongside glass spheres that represent their transformed water volume. The tension between durable bronze and vanishing ice underscores the urgency of climate loss, turning absence into a tangible presence.

Another striking project, The seismographic testimony of distance, transforms the logistics of the exhibition itself into an artwork. Drawing machines placed inside shipping crates record vibrations along each leg of the exhibition’s journey across the Asia-Pacific region. These drawings become quiet meditations on movement, travel, and the environmental cost of global circulation.

By combining sensory immersion with ecological reflection, this Olafur Eliasson exhibition offers more than just a retrospective; it suggests a new way of seeing that reconnects perception, responsibility and the living world. 

Join us for a conversation with Olafur Eliasson on the intersection of art and science, the politics of perception, and environmental urgency.